Public lecture Research project on

Understanding the Tipping Point of Urban Conflict:

Violence, Cities and Poverty Reduction in the Developing World

Caroline Moser Director, Global Urban Research Centre,

University of Manchester

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, 12th June 2012

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Introduction: The project and the event

Project rationale Search for new paradigms and concepts Significance of primary field research Importance of Southern research partners Different research methods - different

findings Policy related results from four cities The challenges of identifying new solutions

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The project rationale

1. Causes of violence: conventional wisdom associated with four factors: Poverty; youth bulges; political exclusion; gender-based insecurity

2. Conflict versus violence: cities are inherently conflictual spaces: Conflict is understood as a situation where individuals

or groups have incongruent, or differing, interests that are contradictory and potentially mutually exclusive

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The project rationale

2. Conflict generally ‘managed’ peacefully by a range of mechanisms:

Sometimes these cannot cope and different forms of violence can emerge

Violence is understood as the forcible imposition, by individual or group, of their interests to the disfavour/exclusion of others

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Search for new concepts: Tipping points

Project hypothesis: The transition from conflict to violence happens when a tipping point is reached Notion originated in 1950s, and refers to the moment a

given social process becomes generalised rather than specific in a rapid rather than gradual manner.

Usually seen to occur as a result a social process acquiring a certain critical mass and crossing a particular threshold, but ultimately it is the possibility that:

‘Small events and actions that produce big changes’

(Gladwell)

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Search for new concepts: Violence chains

Builds on concept of ‘commodity chains’ to identify processes that increase the scale and inter-connectedness of different types of violence The ‘knock on’ effects of different tipping points

Research focus on qualitative process factors Includes systemic transformations, paradigmatic events, evolution of perceptions, and existence of particular networks of social agents as possible causal factors.

Concern with temporal dimension of tipping points and value chains: These are not static concepts, but inherently dynamic The notion of a tipping point can apply to both increases as well as reductions in violence.

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Santiago de Chile, Chile Nairobi, Kenya Dili, East Timor

Patna, India

The primary fieldwork sites

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The importance of Southern research partners Research Centre

Researchers City and Country

Paradigmatic factor

GURC/BWPI, U. of Manchester

Caroline Moser Dennis Rodgers

(PI) (CI)

Eco-Build Africa Alfred Omenya Grace Lubaale

Nairobi, Kenya,

Political exclusion

Corporacion SUR Alfredo Rodriguez Marisol Saborido Olga Segovia

Santiago, Chile

Gender-based insecurity

CCDP , Geneva Oliver Jütersonke Jovana Carapic

Dili, East Timor

Youth

Institute for Human Dev.

Alakh Sharma Dennis Rodgers Shivani Satija

Patna, India

Poverty

Each city paradigmatically associated with one factor, but displaying different levels of overall violence:

City case studies chosen on basis of four factors conventionally identified as causing urban violence

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Combined research components 1. City profile City-level data to contextualize the study as well as urban violence trends

based on quantitative secondary data

2. Sub-city study Perceptions within informal settlements of types of conflict and violence,

tipping point factors that result in violence, and chains linking different types of violence

Based on qualitative and quantitative primary data using different methods, include participatory violence appraisal (PVA), interviews, FGDs, surveying

Primary research undertaken in low-income areas in Nairobi and Patna Santiago: 3-fold study in low, medium, and high-income areas, Dili: particular focus on broader institutional context in Timor

Leste

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Participatory methodology (PVA): Nairobi and Santiago

Origins: Includes work of Chambers, Freire, Indian Environmental NGOs, and Moser & McIlwaine on violence in Colombia and Central America

Principles: Reversal of power - learning from local people rather than extracting: shift from verbal to visual, individual to group

Robustness: Purposive focus group sampling: representative of community members, in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, culture

Mapping hotspots in Kibera, Nairobi Visual representation of violence hotspots in Kibera, Nairobi showing multiple forms of violence

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Participatory methodology (PVA):

Nairobi and Santiago

C. Moser Violence chain, group of adult women, aged 35-56, El

Castillo

Urban spaces have particular dynamics that can exacerbate both conflict and violence

These can facilitate local-level instances of conflict tipping over into broader, city-level expressions of violence

The co-existence of multiple authority and security systems leads to a situation of “institutional multiplicity” This can be both a driver of conflict and violence It can also be an entry-point for keeping conflict and violence in check through a balance between traditional beliefs and liberal democratic values

Lack of meaningful public space in Dili

Key policy insights from Dili

Remnants of war

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Patna: Key policy insights

The spatial distribution of both conflict and violence is critical: Conflict can tip into violence; but also can contain

violence.

Conflict both aggravates and mitigates violence

Mundane, everyday forms of conflicts and violence can link to more extreme and wide-ranging instances, It forms chains that are a consequence of

violence, but can also contribute to conflict tipping into violence.

Attempting to break a violence chains is potentially an ideal entry point for violence-reduction initiatives.

Deficient infrastructure in Mansoorganj Musahartoli

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Nairobi: Key policy insights Policy makers need to recognise the importance

of political violence as an ongoing phenomenon violence Use of PVA to identify different categories of violence

beyond crime statistics – as well as tipping points. Local government priority to spatial slum

improvement programmes provides an opportunity to “mainstream” security and violence reduction into interventions to build physical and human capital Through the provision of water, sanitation, housing

and roads. Initiatives to break the links within violence chains

include Addressing youth unemployment Regularising informal settlements Recognition of the importance of ethnic

intermarriage to alter tribal organisation of space in local settlements.

Solo’s 7’s graffiti: A vote for the constitution is a vote for peace

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Santiago: Key policy insights

Comparative results from different income groups showed that: By defining urban violence

only as a problem of poor areas, other existing manifestations of violence become invisible.

Policy that focuses on direct violence, particularly as it affects the poor, ignores structural indirect violence such policies have limited

impacts. Social cohesion, and citizen participation must be incorporated as crosscutting urban policy themes,

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Public policy responses should be violence instead of security.

Interventions focused on families, schools and communities are necessary to break the violence chains

Comparative findings: 1. Conceptual insights

Tipping points: In all 4 cities grounded local-level findings in broader city-

level processes

Showed importance of moving beyond static measures of violence – aggregated crime statistics – to processes

Documented how tipping points can be reversed

Violence Chains: Showed interconnectedness between different forms of

violence

Focusing on one type of violence in isolation from others offers incomplete reality and obscures causality

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Comparative findings: 2. Challenging conventional wisdoms in all cities

Poverty: A contextual factor; while lack of assess to scarce resources can generate violence: Nairobi; Patna Poverty linked to violence when the non-poor perceive

poverty as a problem and menace– inter-class hostility; Santiago, Patna

Youth: No natural correlation between youth bulges and violence Young men become instrumentally involved in violence

when manipulated by others, including political parties: Nairobi. Dili

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Comparative findings: 2. Challenging conventional wisdoms in all cities

Political exclusion: Violence less related to exclusion and more to the elite obtaining or maintain power : Nairobi, Dili Includes adverse integration into segregated urban

spatial regimes: Santiago. Patna

Inadequate consideration of gender-based insecurity: Entry point for Santiago study, emerged as major concern

in all 4 cities

Clear interconnections between private and public spheres

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1. Space: Lack of public space where different social

groups can interact leads to ‘hotspots’

Generate integrative spaces of negotiation for greater social cohesion

Mainstreaming awareness of spatial manifestations into violence reduction – such as slum upgrading

Cross-cutting policy themes

2. Land: Dysfunctional land tenure systems and land

sub-markets closely associated with violence

Clearly establish rights & obligations of owners and tenants with necessary documentation

Reduce land sub-market gaps Buddha colony slum unilaterally fenced off

by property developers

Hotspot bridge in Mukuru

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Cross cutting policy themes

3. Governance: Highly complex because of multiple and

competing forms of authority within city Exclusionary forms of neo-liberal

governance creates city where particular social groups lose out

Need to promote inclusive, participatory bottom-up integrative measures including social amenities

City level securitization of violence fails to provide permanent transformation of violence reduction

Directly tackle violence by interventions to break chains, reverse tipping points

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Gang frontiers are clearly marked in Dili

Overarching recommendations

1. Mainstream conflict and violence into development debates and policy

Use non-violence entry points such as slum upgrading to recognize that violence is not a separate domain

2. Recognize that urban violence is urban: specificity of urban space with socio-economic and political processes intensified

Use Participatory Violence Appraisal to identify violence that goes beyond crime and rapidly diagnose and monitor spatially different violence chains

3. Engage with the police as development partners

Collaborate with police beyond narrow remit of criminal justice

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Overarching recommendations 4. Experiment with innovative ideas

as means to prevent conflict tipping into violence After 50 years, small innovations

rather than blueprints required

5. Addressing the political economy that underpins conflict and violence: as an end to the issue of distribution of power in society

Public policy must shift from addressing specific problems to determining the kind of society urban citizens want

Are cities privileged spaces in which to reverse unequal power relations?

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“Tipping Points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action. Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push – in just the right place – it can be tipped.” (Malcom Gladwell, 2000: 259)